Labor picks a path through farmland to bring offshore wind to Victoria - AFR

The Victorian government has selected an offshore wind development corridor in the state's southwest, routing transmission infrastructure through farmland to connect the resource to the grid. The corridor, established following a planning process, will enable offshore wind projects to proceed toward development.

Where this fits

Offshore wind is being presented as a high-yield renewable source, yet the decision reveals a structural cost that renewables-only grids cannot escape: the transmission build. Every megawatt of weather-dependent generation requires firm backup (chiefly gas) and transmission capacity sized not for average output but for peak demand. Routing transmission through farmland trades renewable energy density against agricultural land use and construction cost. A firm generation fleet sited closer to demand, or a smaller fleet of dispatchable power, would require neither the transmission corridor nor the gas firming plant that will stand idle most days.

What it means

Australia is committing capital and land to harvest wind offshore, then transmit it hundreds of kilometres through productive country to cities. This is economically rational only if no firm alternative exists. It is not true. A nuclear plant occupies a fraction of the land, generates year-round, requires no gas backup, and produces power at the load centre. Australia's nuclear ban forecloses the lowest-material, lowest-emissions firm option, leaving offshore wind and gas as the path of necessity, not choice. Every transmission corridor, every gas plant built as a result, is the cost of that foreclosure. It is also a cost borne by farmland, not paid by the grid.